The all-star 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' return - set to air in the U.K. on Friday as part of the BBC's Red Nose Day coverage - has added two major names. Subscribe for Daily Entertainment News! ►► http://bit.ly/Sub2THRNews Watch The Latest News ►► http://bit.ly/THRLatest #THR, #THRNews, #RedNoseDay

"We've come to witness the marriage of this man...s daughter to this woman...s daughter," he said awkwardly. "The gift of marriage brings... wife and wife together."

Facing Alicia, Miranda said: "I have known you since we were babies... my father knew your mother... I always knew I liked you. But one day you held my hand and one day you kissed me and my life changed."

"The first time I saw you we were in nappies," Alicia said. "We spent 10 years in the same school uniform. And one day I held your hand and something changed.

Based on labyrinthine and anonymous comment threads, 8chan is one of the darkest corners of the Internet

A suspected shooter in the terror attacks in Christchurch’s livestreamed his rampage at the Al Noor Mosque on Facebook, but gave earlier warning of it via 8chan, a message board known as one of the Internet’s darkest corners.

As the Washington Post’s Drew Harwell remarked on Twitter: “The New Zealand massacre was livestreamed on Facebook, announced on 8chan, reposted on YouTube, commentated about on Reddit, and mirrored around the world before the tech companies could even react.”

We know the main suspect is a 28-year-old Australian white nationalist who hated immigrants, and sought “revenge” against Muslims. But what is 8chan and why did the killer choose this platform to announce himself?

Threads

Based on labyrinthine and anonymous comment threads, 8chan was founded by Fredrick Brennan, a user of similar site 4chan, in the fall of 2013. It is now owned by American Jim Watkins, who is said to be based in the Philippines.

Unlike Facebook, Twitter and other platforms, where users who post hate speech are often banned, 4chan and — to an even more extreme degree — 8chan are very light on moderation.

8chan was spawned by #GamerGate, a long-running episode in which forums were frequently used to “dox” and harass female video game enthusiasts who were pushing back against sexism in their industry.

When sites like 4chan and Reddit belatedly clamped down on such hate-filled forums, Brennan began 8chan as a “free speech friendly 4chan alternative,” the Washington Post reported in 2015. The site became the second-biggest “imageboard” outlet, after 4chan.

These site types were originally used to discuss things like Japanese anime, but are now home to video game experts, Internet culture obsessives and the so-called alt-right. As 8chan grew more and more bilious, Brennan eventually partnered with computer expert Watkins after the site kept getting removed from funding sites such as Patreon for violating terms of use.

“Imageboards are a haven for (terrible things) … and that’s exactly what makes them such wonderful places. I wouldn’t change a thing,” Brennan said at the time.

“It (8chan) became the new digital home for some of the most offensive people on the internet, people who really believe in white supremacy and the inferiority of women,” Ethan Chiel wrote for Splinter News in 2016. 8chan was delisted from Google’s search results the previous year because users were posting child porn.

Manifesto

At about 1:30 p.m. New Zealand time on Friday, the anonymous user told 8chan’s “/pol/ – Politically Incorrect” message board of his impending attack. Approving responses to the post included Nazi images and memes.

The user linked to a Facebook page and 74-page manifesto of a person using the “Brenton Tarrant” name on Twitter. The Twitter account was suspended not long after the shooting, as was the brenton.tarrant.9 Facebook page.

People wait outside a mosque following a mass shooting, in Christchurch, New Zealand, March 15, 2019. Mark Baker/AP

The manifesto said the shooter was motivated by “white genocide,” a term white supremacists use to describe immigration and the growth of minority populations. It’s “time to stop shitposting and time to make a real life effort” he said.

“Shitposting” sees posters deliberately send out online content that is sarcastic and trolling in nature, safe in the knowledge that news consumers — who aren’t aware that the joke is on them — will be upset after taking the “humour” literally.

On the investigative site Bellingcat, Robert Evans pointed out that the manifesto, called “The Great Replacement,” contains views that do actually seem to match the shooter’s held beliefs. His actions, too, indicate extreme white supremacist views. One of his weapons, for example, was emblazoned with the number 14 — this is presumed to refer to the 14 words penned by one infamous neo-Nazi: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

In the shooting’s aftermath, six of the seven top message rooms on 8chan were dominated by the attack, ABC Australia reports. One user posted that “finally” one of their own had “done something.”

Genuine

But the shooter referred to various right-wing figures in his manifesto and not all references appear to have been genuine praise. Evans says the manifesto “is a trap itself, laid for journalists searching for the meaning behind this horrific crime. There is truth in there, and valuable clues to the shooter’s radicalization, but it is buried beneath a great deal of, for lack of a better word, ‘shitposting.’”

For example, in one apparently ironic reference, the shooter talks of far-right figure Candace Owens, saying it was she who first radicalized him as her stunning “insights” pushed him towards violence.

“The ultimate goal is to derail productive discussion and distract readers,” Evans writes. “The Great Replacement is a clear and brutally obvious example of this technique.”

It is misdirection, he says, used to split left and right and maybe even lead them to violence.

Joan Donovan, Director of the Technology and Social Change Research Project at Harvard Kennedy’s Shorenstein Center, agreed. She posted to Twitter:

“Journalists must not annotate the NZ murder’s manifesto. The coded language is not worth your time. Moreover, his social media celebrity call-outs don’t mean you need to ask those influencers to speak on this. Those references were strategically placed to create coverage.”

Journalists must not annotate the NZ murder’s manifesto. The coded language is not worth your time.Moreover, his social media celebrity call outs don’t mean you need to ask those influencers to speak on this. Those references were strategically placed to create coverage.

It’s been an eventful week for spaceflight, with the biggest news being the hotly anticipated launch of the Soyuz rocket carrying a pair of NASA astronauts going smoothly on Thursday, but we’re not done yet. The U.S. Air Force is about to close out the week with the launch of a shiny new Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) communications satellite, and it’s using a Delta IV rocket from United Launch Alliance to make it happen.

The launch, which will be the second Delta IV launch from ULA this year, will take place from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, and you can watch it happen live right here.

The launch window will open at 6:56 p.m. EDT and will extend to 9:05 p.m., allowing plenty of time for ideal launch conditions and for ULA to address any last-second minor issues that might pop up. The stream window below will go live at around 6:30 p.m. EDT.

ULA provides the following launch summary:

WGS-10 will be the eighth flight of the Delta IV in the Medium+ (5,4) configuration; all launches in this configuration have delivered WGS missions to orbit. This mission also will be the 39th launch of the Delta IV since its inaugural launch in 2002.

As you’ve probably already gathered by the fact that the satellite is a piece of Air Force hardware, the new equipment will become a part of an advanced network that is used by the military. The WGS is used by the United States and Australia, as well as Canada.

The launch should be a relatively smooth affair, and the ULA has completed several such launches over the past few years. Nevertheless, it’s still always fun to watch a rocket take off, and these live streams are typically pretty high quality, so kick back, relax, and watch it fly.

A United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket will launch the 10th Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS 10) spacecraft for the U.S. military at 5:56 p.m. EST from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Liftoff window begins at 5:56 p.m. EST (22:56 GMT). This will be the 10th satellite of the WGS constellation that provides broadband communications for the U.S.

The American player came through the qualifiers and lost to Milos Raonic in the third round. "That was amazing," admitted Giron. "It was one of those that I – because I was upset. I was up a break in the third.

And so being competitive, I would have loved to have won. But then I also realize this is not something that I've experienced really. And so I just on the way out I just wanted to make sure that I really got to see and take it in before I left.

And it was really cool to be able to see that. Being on the second biggest stadium in the world here in Southern California in Indian Wells, it was amazing. I remember eight, nine years ago sitting in the top rafters seeing Rafa Nadal and Roger Federer play.

So being out on center court and looking from the other side was really cool." On how he sees his future in professional tennis, Giron added: "I would like to sneak into more ATP events, but I think I'm still going to have to play challengers to get the ranking up.

It secures me into the Grand Slam quallies. That's nice. That's one of my big goals for the year was to make French Open quallies and go play Wimbledon quallies, something I haven't done in the past. I played juniors there.

So that was one of my goals and another one was to hopefully be top 125 in the world by the end of the year. So it puts me closer, but I still need to go back and go back to the basics. I will try to play more ATP events when it's available, but with the ranking at 170 it doesn't get me necessarily into all of them."